1. Field of the Invention
An aspect of the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and, more particularly, to a rollers separating unit which may separate a heating roller from a pressurizing roller to remove paper jammed in a fixing unit of an image forming apparatus, as well as an image forming apparatus having the same installed therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in an image forming apparatus, transferring a printing medium on which an image is formed such as paper (hereinafter, referred to as ‘paper’) and forming an image on the paper increases the possibility that the transferred paper may be jammed.
In particular, an electrophotographic image forming apparatus forms an electrostatic latent image on a photoconductor by laser beams that are emitted from an exposure unit, and develops the electrostatic latent image by a toner so as to form a visible image. Thereafter, the image forming apparatus transcribes the toner to form the visible image to paper, and fixes the toner to the paper by applying pressure and heat by a fixing unit so as to perform a printing operation.
Here, in the fixing unit, a heating roller to apply heat to the paper and a pressurizing roller to apply pressure to the paper are installed to face each other. Accordingly, when the paper on which the toner has been transcribed passes between the heating roller and the pressurizing roller, the toner is fixed to the paper. However, when the paper passing through the fixing unit is jammed between the pressurizing roller and the heating roller, since the pressurizing roller pressurizes the paper to the heating roller, the jammed paper is not easily removed. In order to remove the paper jammed in the fixing unit, the user must open the cover of the image forming apparatus and release pressure of the pressurizing roller. Otherwise, the user must forcibly pull the jammed paper under the pressure of the pressurizing roller. As a result, the user may not easily remove the jammed paper and either the heating roller or the pressurizing roller may be damaged.